During a crisis of any type, the main enemy is fear. If it’s a short term problem that’s faced, panic begin to spread at light speed. However, on long term issues, panic is replaced by paranoia. As the days passed, it could be seen that people limited the amount of time they spent outside. However, life had to go on and people were finally forced to go out. The shrinking virus was on everyone’s minds. I knew that because I was scared too. Too tell you the truth I was scared shitless. I’ve no shame saying it. The situation we were facing was unprecedented. We didn’t know how to react to it. Should we try to cure the virus? Try to protect the shrunken victims? Try to find a vaccine to prevent the shrinking from happening? The truth was that we couldn’t do any of these three propositions. Simply because we had no clue how to make any of these.

The journalists were keeping their audiences thanks to headlines filling our heads with fear and anxiety. I know I didn’t want to watch them but at the same time I wanted to know what was happening. One night, as I was laying in my bed trying to sleep, I thought about what Jade Hannen said. About the importance of adopting good reflexes towards the shrunken people early. I was also thinking about all the things I was reading on Facebook and Twitter. All these people who already considered shrunken people like non humans. The misinformation and the humans’ lack of intelligence in crisis situation didn’t help. Everywhere I could read:

“There’s no way I’m touching one of these tiny fucks. What if I shrink too because of them? #shrinkies #sh02”

This kind of tweet was common these days. It was mind blowing how fast people were changing their minds about persons that were their equals only days ago. It made me angry to think about it. I couldn’t fucking sleep. I got up and sat down at my desk where I opened my laptop. I went to CNN, the BBC, SkyNews, BFM. All were saying the same: “The shrinking virus, where will it stop?”. Freaking originals guys... After 15 minutes of complete passiveness, a special flash appeared almost at the same time on four channels.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, good evening. I’m Jack Dempsey and you’re watching our breaking news. We just received a video that could hurt the sensibility of our youngest audience. Please, viewer discretion is advised. The images you’re about to see I’ve been filmed in Berlin this afternoon.”

Following a Breaking News jingle, I watched my screen with interest. I wanted to know what the fuck this video was about. What I saw punched me right in the face. At the terrace of a café in Downtown Berlin, a business woman, eating her lunch, was sat. At first I didn’t get what was happening but only a few seconds later it hit me. Down on the ground, next to the high heels she took off during her break, was a very small woman. She couldn’t be more than 2 inches. She was naked and visibly scared. We could clearly see she was trying to get the woman’s attention by jumping and what seemed like screaming. Finally, the tiny woman decided to go hit the giant woman nylon clad toes. After 4 or 5 hits, the German finally looked down. I swear I genuinely believed things would go right. However, the rest of my body was telling me otherwise. The giant woman, smiled, pushed the tiny woman with her toes and sent her fly under the table. She giggled and simply put her foot down on the tiny girl. And just like that she killed a human being. With a fucking giggle! Blood was flowing under her foot and the video stopped. I couldn’t take it. I threw up. Right fucking there. As if what I saw made everything in my body sick. That poor tiny girl just wanted help and she died simply because this giant bitch put her foot on her. Just because she wanted to. It was fucked. At least I knew it would be a wakeup call for the world. People would realize that the victims of the virus were human beings. I went downstairs get rags to clean up the mess I made. By the time I came back 45 new tweets appeared in my feed. I read the first one:

“So fucking badass #BerlinCrush #GirlPower #Savage #Shrinkies #GetTheFuckOff”

I was gonna be sick again.